How will digital marketing trends in 2023 affect your business?
The global digital environment is constantly and relentlessly evolving. To compete in this market and even increase your sales and, more importantly, your ROI, you have no choice but to keep pace with this evolution.
But how? What can we expect in 2023? What are the challenges for CMOs? What should they be looking out for? In this article, we look at the answers to these questions, based on several international studies!
A recent survey asked nearly 3,000 chief marketing officers (CMOs) and marketing directors about the impact of the past few years and the current crisis on marketing. Here are the key facts:
- The marketing professionals surveyed spend 57.9% of their available budget on online marketing.
- They spend 44% of their online marketing budget on paid advertising. This includes PPC, SEO, social media and shopping campaigns.
- 75.1% of respondents have invested more resources in optimising their website in the last year, 66.7% have started to make strategic decisions based on professional data analysis and 63.6% have increased their focus on PPC advertising.
- More than 30% of respondents said that their investments were generating only average or no return on investment, which, if not drastically improved, put the survival of the company at risk.
Source: https://cmosurvey.org/results/
It’s easy to see that the road to success in 2023 is through digitalisation. |
The biggest marketing challenges
1. ROI
We dare venture to guess that every marketing manager has had a conversation with the head of the company in which he or she aims to increase revenue by X% in the coming year, while reducing the available marketing budget by Y%.
The good news is that we have the perfect ability to assess and analyse the effectiveness of digital channel spend (with the right ad and measurement settings) and optimise campaigns where necessary.
Check the effectiveness of your own business with our free ROI and ROAS (Return On Ad Spent) calculators!
2. Data-driven marketing – or data collection and analysis
Collecting, cleansing and analysing online and offline data allows CMOs to pinpoint their customers’ needs and behaviours and select the online tools and presentations that best suit them. This is a challenge for many marketing managers because they lack the methodological skills to process the vast amount of data.
“Information is power, if you use it right, you win”. |
3. Data collection – Privacy
Internet users and online shoppers are increasingly aware of the need to provide their personal data, and lawmakers around the world are tracking the needs and rules for the provision, storage and use of personal data. This will really affect the online world from 2023 onwards, when Google Chrome (the world’s most popular browser) will phase out the use of 3rd party cookies, forcing businesses to try to somehow collect data from the so-called first party (customer/visitor), as the current measurement methodology will be useless. This topic has been covered in detail in a previous article.
4. Digital experts
If you’ve ever tried to find or hire someone in-house who is a one-man show, from PPC ad management to website SEO to content production, you already know that it’s not a “one man show.” We wrote more about this phenomenon in this article. But to stay competitive, you need to understand all of these areas, or work with an outsourced team that you trust, who are transparent, and with whom you can be sure your ROAS metrics will make business leaders happy.
What do we need to watch out for?
To get a return on your marketing investment, here are some points to keep in mind:
- Digital transformation – systems, processes. If your company does not yet have a “digital footprint”, or not strong enough, if it is not optimally integrated into your business systems, the potential of digital transformation is untapped.
- Digital Analytics – turning data into information: Today, SEO, UX/UI, a Google Ads or Facebook, Dispaly, Youtube, etc. ad is no longer enough to be successful. In order to improve the effectiveness of all of these, we need to be able to collect and manage the immense amount of data available to us in the right systems, turn it into the right metrics and use it to create new strategies
- Let’s get to know our customers! Map the customer journey! To develop the most optimal sales strategy and to use advertising tools effectively, we need to know exactly which route our customers have taken to reach us. How many times have they visited our website? Did they look at the company’s Facebook profile, or did they just come from a search ad and immediately engage with the brand?
- Testing. Let’s do AB tests related to the previous point! Don’t rely on assumptions about what works and what doesn’t, rely on accurate data to respond to changing consumer needs and develop new sales strategies!
- 1st Party Data Strategy. As mentioned above, changing data protection rules mean that we will lose the ability to collect third party data next year, so we need to be prepared to start collecting first party data as soon as possible.
- Resource and skillset planning. Recognise if you don’t have the resources within your company to do all this and, if necessary, outsource it to an external team.
- Finally, and most importantly, alignment with corporate business goals and vision. CMOs have a responsibility to keep in mind how digital marketing tools contribute to the achievement of business goals, how they help drive growth and reduce costs, ultimately achieving greater ROI.
Distribution of marketing expenditure by channel in 2022
Source: https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/digital-marketing-trends-innovation/
Summary
Marketing professionals are using digital marketing to navigate the incredibly difficult business conditions in the current market. If they haven’t started digitising yet, they need to get started immediately, and if they have been doing so for some time, now is the time to build on existing data and results to offer personalised services to their customers, with a demonstrable higher return on investment. Those who take these steps in time will stay ahead of their competitors, achieve higher revenues and grow and develop despite the financial crisis.